Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration

In mid-December 2008, pro-choice groups in the United States submitted a 55-page set of marching orders titled Advancing Reproductive Rights and Health in a New Administration to President-elect Barack Obama's transition team. The document urged the next President to "articulate and implement a vision for a new, commonsense approach to the nation's and the world's pressing reproductive health needs, and to take concrete steps to":

• Prioritize prevention;
• Improve access to abortion care;
• Support healthy pregnancies;
• Guarantee access to comprehensive, quality, affordable health care for all;
• Reclaim America's global leadership on reproductive health;
• Restore integrity to the government's public health decision-making processes;
• Invest in research and initiatives to improve women's health; and
• Appoint judges and executive officials who are highly qualified and committed to individual rights and justice.

The plan encourages the Obama team to support more readily available abortions. It asks for $700 million for funding programs under U.S. Code, Title X--the family planning area--that includes abortions. The plan requests Obama remove a rule change at Health and Human Services instituted August 26, 2008, that prohibited states and other recipients of federal funds from penalizing health-care workers who refuse to provide abortions because of religious or moral beliefs or risk losing federal funding.

The groups also want Mr. Obama to do away with what is commonly called the "global gag rule" that was reinstated by President George W. Bush on his first day in office in January 2001. Officially termed the Mexico City Policy, it prohibits foreign recipients of U.S. family planning aid from using their own funds to provide abortions or advocate for laws and policies supporting them. Instead, this plan leans in the opposite direction by demanding renewed and increased funding for the U.N. Population Control program to enable greater numbers of abortions in countries like China. The groups are also urging Mr. Obama to do away with the "abstinence-only" education programs authored and funded by President Clinton.

The plan gets very specific in that the groups want President-Elect Obama to only "nominate individuals who, in addition to meeting the requirements of honesty, integrity, character, temperament, and intellect, demonstrate a commitment to justice, civil rights, equal rights, individual liberties, and the fundamental constitutional right to privacy, including the right to have an abortion." And as Mr. Obama has pretty much complied with this demand, he may fall right in line with others.

We urge Mr. Obama to choose his course wisely.

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